Performance Assessment of Narrowband Iot for Intelligent Cargo Transportation
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Trepo - Institutional Repository of Tampere University Srikanth Kavuri PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT OF NARROWBAND IOT FOR INTELLIGENT CARGO TRANSPORTATION Faculty of Computing and Electrical Engineering Master of Science Thesis February 2019 i ABSTRACT SRIKANTH KAVURI: Performance Assessment of Narrowband IoT for Intelligent Cargo Trans- portation Tampere University Master of Science thesis, 55 pages February 2019 Master’s Degree Programme in Information Technology Major: Communication Systems and Networks Supervisors: Dr. Dmitri Moltchanov, Asst. Prof. Sergey Andreev Examiners: Dr. Dmitri Moltchanov, Asst. Prof. Sergey Andreev Keywords: NB-IoT performance, LTE narrow band, cargo ships, smart transportation Narrow Band Internet of Things (NB-IoT) is the most advanced technology standard for short message services, such as sensor data, developed by 3GPP Release 13 and beyond. The NB- IoT is deployed over Long Term Evolution (LTE) Advanced Pro infrastructure and theoretically, it offers extended coverage up to 40 km from the base station. The objective of this thesis is to analyze the performance of NB-IoT technology in cargo shipment tracking using LTE cellular networks across the coastal line. Currently, about fifty thousand cargo ships use onboard Satellite communication system for all sorts of information exchange with the onshore data centers. The Satellite communication will continue to exist, even after deployment of NB-IoT. Apart from the machine critical data of the cargo ships, the non-emergency periodic short messages for polling meteorological and container metadata such as temperature, humidity, gaseous detection, etc. will be crucial for the quality of the shipment and the traceability. In this thesis, we analyze deployment of NB-IoT sensors for cargo container to track and provide metadata about the condition of goods. We evaluate three implementation methods of NB-IoT for cargo ships, optimize the coverage and enhance the battery life of the sensor equipment. The main idea is to offload non-critical information that would otherwise use expensive Satellite links, thus embrace the NB-IoT technology at offshore and reduce the financial stress on the cargo shipments. In the first method, all the sensors transfer the periodic data directly to the coastal LTE network when the ships sail in close proximity to the shore. In the second method, the sensors transfer data to an LTE base station installed locally on the ship and then accumulated information will be relayed to onshore LTE network over NB-IoT channel. In the third method, an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV/ Drone) base station will collect the data from the onboard sensors; it then relays the information to the onshore LTE network. For all methods, when there is no LTE coverage, the accumulated data will be sent over the Satellite link, which will be available onboard. The assessment confirms the hypothesis that the packet loss probability reduces when the base station is located close to the sensor, where the number of retransmissions will be reduced, and more uplink resources will be available. For direct access scenario, a large number of users contend for Random Access Channel (RACH) simultaneously after entering into the LTE coverage. The packet will be dropped after reaching the maximum number of attempts for the RACH resources. As per the simulated results, mean lifespan of a sensor is greatly affected by the LTE network availability and random access procedure, during which the sensor spends most of the energy for transmissions. The mean transmit delay will be higher with second and third methods where the ship BS, UAV BS accumulate packets until they find the LTE network or relays the data to the Satellite link if the LTE outage is longer. This performance assessment provides technical insights for the maritime industry to embrace the NB-IoT for tracking and condition monitoring of shipment. PREFACE Firstly, I would like to thank Dr. Dmitri Moltchanov for mentoring and guiding me with the topic and motivating throughout the thesis work. It was helpful to receive timely feedback on my work and providing a roadmap. It was a great experience working for this thesis where, I experienced research methodology, materializing the basic idea into a scientific work. I must thank Tampere University administration for proving me an opportunity and mak- ing a hassle-free ecosystem for the internationals. Also thankful for the entire faculty and co-students helped me in enriching my knowledge and cooperated for the term that I spent on the Master’s degree. I consider this is one of the milestones achieved in the journey of life and would dedicate this achievement to my family, who sacrificed and supported me no matter what may come. Tampere, 17 February 2019 Srikanth Kavuri CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................. 1 1.1 Massive Machine Type Communication .............................................................. 2 1.2 Smart Applications of NB-IoT Technology ........................................................... 5 1.3 Use Case for Autonomous Vessels ..................................................................... 7 1.4 State of the Art of Internet of Things technology ................................................. 8 2. NB-IOT TECHNOLOGY AND EVOLUTION ...................................................................... 10 2.1 NB-IoT Specification and Deployment Options ................................................. 11 2.2 NB-IoT Frame Structure ..................................................................................... 12 2.3 Coverage Assessment ....................................................................................... 21 2.4 Energy Consumption .......................................................................................... 23 3. NB-IOT FOR CARGO SHIPS ............................................................................................. 26 3.1 Deployment options ........................................................................................... 26 3.1.1 Direct Access with Coastal LTE Network ................................................ 26 3.1.2 Interface with Ship Base Station ............................................................. 28 3.1.3 Interface with Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Base Station ........................... 31 3.1.4 Backup Plan during LTE Network Outage .............................................. 32 3.2 System Model .................................................................................................... 33 3.3 Connectivity Assessment ................................................................................... 34 3.4 Simulation Model for RACH ............................................................................... 35 4. NUMERICAL ASSESSMENT ............................................................................................. 42 4.1 System input parameters ................................................................................... 42 4.2 Packet loss performance analysis ..................................................................... 43 4.3 Mean transmit delay analysis ............................................................................. 46 4.4 Mean sensor lifespan analysis ........................................................................... 48 5. CONCLUSION.................................................................................................................... 51 REFERENCES....................................................................................................................... 53 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. M2M traffic growth [9]. ......................................................................................... 3 Figure 2. NB-IoT applications [7]. ....................................................................................... 5 Figure 3. LTE based IoT technologies [7]. ........................................................................ 10 Figure 4. NB-IoT deployment options [14] ........................................................................ 11 Figure 5. LTE Narrowband Downlink frame structure [35] ............................................... 12 Figure 6. NB-IoT Primary Resource Block ....................................................................... 13 Figure 7. Narrowband Control Channel Elements format ................................................ 16 Figure 8. NB-IoT Uplink frame format ............................................................................... 16 Figure 9. LTE NB Preamble format .................................................................................. 18 Figure 10. NB-IoT Random Access Procedure .................................................................. 19 Figure 11. NPRACH Preamble Repetitions ........................................................................ 20 Figure 12. NB-IoT Downlink coverage ................................................................................ 22 Figure 13. NB-IoT Uplink coverage .................................................................................... 23 Figure 14. Power Saving Mode [37] ................................................................................... 24 Figure 15. extended Discontinuous Reception mode [37] .................................................